


make this anything you like (good things don’t come easy)

by taywen



Category: Machineries of Empire Series - Yoon Ha Lee
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Fix-It, Gen, Mild Smut, Minor Character Death, Multi, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:13:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21661993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taywen/pseuds/taywen
Summary: Vestenya Ruo survives his first year at Shuos Academy Prime. A few things change after that.
Relationships: Garach Jedao Shkan/Lirov Yeren, Garach Jedao Shkan/Lirov Yeren/Vestenya Ruo
Comments: 4
Kudos: 32
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DreamsAtDusk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamsAtDusk/gifts).



> happy Yuletide, DreamsAtDusk! you mentioned Yeren and Ruo in your letter, which sent me off running. I hope you don’t mind that Sereset also wandered in smiling and, uh, refused to leave?
> 
> title from "Tricky" by Fitz and the Tantrums, which I think fits Jedao rather well, so. yeah.

A high priority ping directly to his augment woke Ruo at some ridiculous hour of the morning.

It wasn’t that unusual. The day-night cycle on his home planet synced strangely with the high calendar, resulting in most major remembrances taking place in the dead of local night—he’d been woken in a similar manner to observe the remembrances more times than he could count.

There had also been a crisis drill that woke all the first-years at a similar hour a month or so after he’d come to Shuos Academy Prime—he’d been more prepared than most thanks to the afore-mentioned calendrical oddity, but he meant to make an even better showing this time.

He was most of the way into his uniform before he registered that the message was from Yeren, not academy security or some instructor or other. She shouldn’t have had a high enough level of access to use the grid to wake him like this, but she was years ahead of what the first-year cadets were learning in their hacking course. It probably shouldn’t surprise him that she could pull something like this off.

He sent back an acknowledgment and finished pulling on the rest of his uniform. In theory there was a curfew for the cadets housed on the academy’s campus, but no Shuos—prospective or otherwise—worth their salt would get caught by the trivial measures in place to keep them from breaking it. Jedao had speculated once that it was in place to keep the cadets on their toes and weed out the truly hopeless; Ruo was inclined to agree.

He slipped off campus around seven minutes later. He would’ve been faster, but there were an unusual number of security officers around the academy tonight—including Rahal and Vidona. Very strange. But Yeren’s message was more pressing.

What did _Jedao needs you_ mean, anyway? He was dating Yeren now, not Ruo. But the brevity of the message could be for the benefit of anyone else reading it. Just because Yeren had deep grid access that she shouldn’t have didn’t mean the instructors were unaware of it.

He got to Yeren’s apartment twenty-eight minutes after he’d awoken. The door opened after verifying his identity, revealing an empty main room. Nothing seemed amiss; it looked about the same as it had the one other time Ruo had visited.

There was a light on further down the hall. The door to the bedroom was cracked open; within, Jedao lay on the bed, his head in Yeren’s lap. He tensed but didn’t turn when Ruo stepped into the room.

“Ruo’s here, Jedao,” Yeren said softly, but Jedao stayed tense. He didn’t even look up.

Yeren was pale. Ruo didn’t know her as well as Jedao, but they’d almost finished their introductory course on reading body language and micro-expressions: she practically exuded stress.

Ruo opened his mouth to demand what was going on, but Yeren just nodded to her terminal. The screen was bright in the otherwise dark room: it was the same light he’d seen when he first came in.

He frowned but went over to the terminal. He’d never seen Yeren so grave before.

“Well?” Jedao demanded less than seven minutes later. His voice almost sounded normal.

“Well what?” Ruo retorted automatically. “Not everyone can read as fast as you.”

He’d already read what Yeren wanted him to though, or most of it anyway. He just—didn’t know what to do with the information.

A third-year cadet had committed suicide earlier tonight. The alternative was face extradition and likely ritual torture as a heretic for some remembrance; they’d been caught playing the anonymous heresy game with a visiting Rahal magistrate.

The same game Jedao had admitted under duress to creating after Ruo had confided that he meant to play it with that very same magistrate just two days ago. Ruo had been adamant that he wanted to prank the Rahal despite Yeren and Jedao’s objections—until Jedao had come out with that particular bombshell.

“It’s a good thing you’re declaring for infantry then.”

Ruo twisted around to glare at Jedao, but his friend hadn’t moved. His face was still turned resolutely to the wall. Ruo rose to go over to him, then—stopped. But Yeren just gestured impatiently for him to come over.

Ruo turned the terminal’s screen off and went, pausing only to strip off his uniform jacket and pants. Yeren had slipped down between Jedao and the wall in the meantime, so Ruo climbed in behind him.

It was habit to press a kiss to the crown of Jedao’s head, but that only made Jedao tense even further.

“Are you trying to comfort me?” Jedao’s voice had a cruel edge to it. Not the first time Ruo had heard it, but Jedao had never turned it on him before. “I’m not the idiot who killed themself.”

“Jedao,” Yeren said. The censure in her voice was ruined by the waver she couldn’t entirely hide.

“That could’ve been me,” Ruo said. He hadn’t let himself consciously think about that when he’d read the report, but in the darkness it was—easier, somehow. The rest of the heptarchate still existed—they were discussing it, for a given value of discussion—but it felt like the three of them were the only ones in the world.

Jedao drew in a ragged breath but said nothing.

Yeren gave a weak smile. “Not going to claim that you wouldn’t have gotten caught, Ruo?”

The dead cadet had been, by most accounts, a rising star in the infantry track. Skill at infiltration and subterfuge was required for Shuos infantry—and they’d still gotten caught.

“I thought it went without saying,” Ruo said lightly.

“Don’t joke about it!”

Ruo ached to put his arms around Jedao, but he didn’t know if that would be welcome. He’d seen Jedao vulnerable before, but never in this context.

In a way, the cadet’s death was Jedao’s fault. He’d authored the game; he’d meant it to be played. But he hadn’t _made_ anyone play it, and he certainly hadn’t made the cadet play it with a Rahal official any more than he’d put the gun in the cadet’s hand and told them to pull the trigger when they got caught.

“You’d get over me eventually, I’m sure,” Ruo said, before the silence could go on for too long.

“I would,” Jedao agreed coldly.

Ruo exhaled. Jedao’s reflexes really were unerring. He knew just where to strike for lethal damage.

Jedao curled forward, pressing his face into Yeren’s shoulder. Away from Ruo. Ruo took another slow breath.

“But I’m glad I don’t have to.” The words were muffled against Yeren’s skin, but a hand—scarred, _from the geese_ , if Jedao was to be believed—brushed against Ruo’s.

Ruo caught it in his own and held tight, following the gentle—inexorable—pull Jedao exerted on that single point of contact until he was flush to his friend’s back, his arm curled tight around Jedao’s waist.

If Yeren felt cramped against the wall, she said nothing about it. Eventually, Jedao relaxed more fully and his breathing slowed: asleep, or making a very good impression of it.

Ruo met Yeren’s eyes over Jedao’s head. Neither of them slept a wink before the sun rose scant hours later.

* * *

Yeren was the first person in her family to aim for the Shuos.

Her older mother was third-generation Liozh, her father was a Vidona-trained physician, and her younger mother oversaw a local crèche. That mother had a brother in the Andan and an alt sibling who had joined the Nirai.

Her auncle had been assigned to a research station in orbit around Yeren’s home planet before she was born; as a result, she saw them frequently as she grew up. From them, she’d received her first tablet, and they’d taught her the rudiments of hacking. Yeren had considered applying to the Nirai, briefly, but the Nirai’s seeming detachment from the implications and effects of their innovations troubled her.

Her Liozh mother’s influence, probably. But the Liozh held even less appeal for Yeren. She gravitated to the Shuos instead, and was accepted to Shuos Academy Prime.

Typically, the most promising candidates were sent to the prime academies, but astrographical constraints also factored into assignments. A cadet from the far side of the heptarchate who was accepted into Shuos Academy Prime could rest assured that they had tested exceptionally well, though that hardly guaranteed them success; likewise, studying at the satellite campuses did not unduly dictate the limits of their future career.

Yeren’s home world was in a system adjacent to the one in which Shuos Academy Prime was located, however. Obviously, her scores weren’t so abysmal that they would go to the trouble of sending her to the farther-flung secondary or tertiary academies—the Shuos would have surely rejected her application out of hand, were that the case—but Yeren was curious how she measured up to her classmates.

Hacking the grid and locating her profile was easy enough. It required more than the basics taught in the first-year hacking course, but her auncle had taught her well. The Shuos were aware of her auncle’s influence: her aptitude for hacking was one of the reasons they’d accepted her. There were few other notations, but she had only just begun her study with the Shuos then; the rest of her cohort’s profiles read similarly.

No one reprimanded her for hacking the grid that first time, or any of the times that followed. Yeren always hid her tracks well, but she knew better than to assume her actions went unnoticed.

The day after Merina Trise committed suicide, Yeren went into the city and hacked Jedao’s profile. It was full of notations—commendations, mostly—by various instructors. The most recent addition was from an anonymous administrator, but the system had logged its origin: the edit had been made from a terminal on the Citadel of Eyes.

_Created the game responsible for Merina Trise’s suicide. Keep an eye on this one._

Chenoi Tiana’s profile had already been updated with notes from instructors within the academy praising her for taking responsibility for the game in the wake of Trise’s death; Yeren had checked earlier.

A notification popped up in the corner of her screen. Yeren glanced at it automatically; perhaps she’d lost track of time and her twenty-eight minutes on this public city terminal were almost up—

_Check your profile next, little kit._

The notification looked legitimate on the surface, but the font was not the standard set used by public terminals, and the colours were slightly off: a transparently sloppy attempt to imitate an official notification.

Or a warning.

Yeren checked her profile.

 _Exceptional hacking skills. Keep an eye on this one,_ read the newest notation. It was from the same anonymous administrator who had edited Jedao’s profile.

* * *

“Do you think the academy would still accept a track change?” Ruo asked. He wasn’t whining, no matter what the mild look Yeren sent him might imply. It was just that Ruo couldn’t be the best of his cohort when Jedao consistently beat him in almost every course in the infantry track, while taking a secondary specialty in analysis too.

She turned back to her terminal. “For you or for Jedao?”

“Jedao, obviously.” Ruo couldn’t envision a career for himself outside of Shuos infantry. Jedao would probably still be a better assassin than Ruo, but he would thrive in any of the specialty tracks offered by the academy. The very thought of spending the majority of his time behind a desk like most analysts made Ruo break out in a cold sweat.

“Ah. Then yes, most likely.”

Even if he’d more or less been thinking the same thing— “You don’t think I’d succeed as an analyst?”

Yeren’s eyes flicked from the screen to him for a bare instant, somehow managing to convey a wealth of disdain despite that.

“I could tutor you in hacking, I suppose.”

“And crash your hot dates with Jedao? No thanks.”

“Your loss.” Yeren smiled, dangerous and inviting all at once. Maybe they taught that in the third-year seduction course.

She could have gone for the obvious opening—namely, that Ruo had had little success in finding hot dates of his own since Trise committed suicide. The truth was that he had little interest, and he wasn’t so devastatingly attractive that others might try to pursue him despite his seeming lack of interest.

Dating just seemed—less interesting than spending time with Jedao and Yeren. By some unspoken agreement, he and Yeren had closed ranks around Jedao last year and hadn’t really stopped ever since. Still, Ruo couldn’t shake the feeling that he didn’t know the full picture. Yeren seemed so—worried, at times.

Jedao’s playful drawl of “I’m home,” interrupted before Ruo could think of a suitable reply for her.

Ruo sat up from where he’d been sprawled on her bed so he could catch Jedao’s wrist as he came into the bedroom and tug him down to press a kiss to the top of his head.

Jedao’s grin when he righted himself was sly. “Who’s this stranger in your bed, Yeren?”

“Must be an assassin who got the drop on me,” Yeren said, deadpan.

Jedao scoffed. “That’d never happen.”

“Hey, my situational awareness is improving!” Their infiltration instructor had even praised him for it yesterday.

Jedao and Yeren shared a look. Ruo sank back against the bed, pouting.

“Maybe I can’t compare to the great Garach Jedao—”

“Few can.” Jedao looked smug, though it was ruined a moment later when behind him Yeren slipped out of her chair and proceeded to tickle him mercilessly.

Ruo barely pulled his legs out of the way in time as they collapsed across the foot of the bed, Jedao shaking with poorly-suppressed laughter.

“No one expects the analyst assassin,” Yeren said, sharing a smirk with Ruo.

Jedao managed to twist her hand away from him in that moment of inattention, and kissed her before she could resume tickling him.

After a few moments of this, Ruo gave himself a mental shake and cleared his throat. “I think that’s my cue to leave.”

Jedao’s eyes were dark as he pulled away briefly. “You don’t have to—”

“You don’t,” Yeren agreed. Her lips were a distracting shade of red.

“I have to study for our foreign linguistics class,” Ruo said. It wasn’t even a lie.

“I should study too,” Jedao said, which was a lie. He had a facility with languages that Ruo utterly lacked, though he’d made no effort to shed his low language drawl.

Ruo waved him away as he stood. “I’ll pester you if I have any questions later and you can explain it to me in short words.”

“If you’re certain,” Yeren said, oddly formal.

Ruo smiled and headed for the door. He glanced back as he passed over the threshold; Yeren had Jedao’s hands pinned over his head, and Jedao—

Ruo closed the door quietly, walked down the hall, and let himself out of Yeren’s apartment.

* * *

“Ruo giving you trouble again?” Jedao drawled: their friend’s public profile was displayed on the screen of Yeren’s tablet. Jedao’s grin sharpened when she startled. “Must be serious if you didn’t even hear me come in.”

His boots were stashed neatly next to her own by the entryway, and his jacket hung beside hers in the closet. She was even seated facing the entrance, though she’d had her head turned down to the tablet in her lap.

“Ruo keeping himself out of trouble would be more cause for concern.” She exited the cadet database and set her tablet aside. Ruo had been on her mind of late, it was true, and frustrating as he could be, he was the most pleasant of the three challenges that occupied her during her third year of study.

The coursework—excluding her hacking class—was a necessary, if stimulating, challenge. The mysterious administrator who’d left notations on the profiles of a handful of seemingly random cadets was a frustrating black box. Figuring out how to get Vestenya Ruo on board with dating her and Jedao had lower stakes, though the pay off could be more rewarding. Hopefully.

Yeren really had four chief concerns this year, but four was unlucky, and Jedao wasn’t so much a challenge as someone she needed to keep an eye on so he didn’t burn out before he could grow into his brilliance. He spent ever more time with her since Ruo had taken to hanging out with them in his spare time as well, so that was fairly easy.

“That would never happen.” Jedao dropped down on the couch next to her, settling his head in her lap as if it was where he belonged.

“Where _is_ Ruo?” He and Jedao shared even more classes than they had the year before, since they’d both declared for the infantry track; she knew that their last class today was the same, and had expected them to show up at her apartment together.

“Getting into trouble, probably.” Jedao didn’t sound too concerned, at least.

“Did he finally agree to a date with that first-year alt?” They had been rather persistent.

Jedao snorted. “No. He got a message from one of his fathers. Nothing life-threatening, I don’t think, but he wanted to send a reply as soon as he could.”

“His fathers are a couple,” Yeren realized. Ruo’s profile—the private one, for the administration—even said he had three older siblings and two parents. The two eldest were in monogamous relationships, though the third was currently unattached.

Jedao sat up, his gaze coolly assessing. The ease with which he slipped into detachment unnerved her at times, but he softened a moment later. “Relationships with more than two partners are uncommon on his home planet.”

“Uncommon, or—?” The heptarchate was home to thousands of worlds and millions of different cultures. Everyone adhered to the high calendar—they had to—but beyond that, so long as their beliefs didn’t interfere with the remembrances, different groups were allowed to practice what they wanted. For some, that meant their definition of family was more rigid than others.

“I don’t know, I’ve never asked him. I queried the grid.”

Yeren sighed. “So you don’t know if he’s interested in a triad.”

“Are _you_?”

Had she been too subtle? She’d thought she and Jedao were on the same page about this; they’d asked Ruo to stay on several occasions.

“My parents are a triad,” she pointed out.

“And my mother had three children and never married.” Jedao’s voice had an edge.

Yeren swallowed her reply, the accusation that wanted to slip out along with her hurt. She’d been dating Jedao for the better part of a year, but they were both still young—she shouldn’t have assumed anything without first discussing it with him.

Jedao’s mouth twisted—a far cry from his usual sly grin. “Some people looked down on single parents back home.” It wasn’t quite an apology, but it helped. “I don’t see what the issue is but—I do want to marry, if—it comes to that.” He looked away, flushing.

“Me and Ruo?”

Jedao licked his lips, his cheeks reddening further. “Do you?” he pressed, rather than answer directly; but his defiant look was ruined by the swell of his pupils.

“I want to try to reach an arrangement with the three of us,” Yeren said. “I thought it was obvious.”

She didn’t mean it as an accusation. Thankfully, it didn’t land that way either: the look on Jedao’s face was pure arousal. Yeren found herself pressed back against the couch in the next instant as Jedao kissed her with unexpected enthusiasm.

“I didn’t know—”

“I didn’t say,” Yeren said, managing to get the words out between kisses. It was easy to forget the importance of communication when so much of the Shuos ethos relied upon implication and plausible deniability.

“I thought you were trying to make Ruo jealous,” Jedao said later, his voice cracking as she took his cock in hand.

“Jealous enough to fuck us!”

Jedao came with a groan, practically untouched.

It was at that point that Ruo came in. She looked up reflexively when the door opened, and saw the exact moment that Ruo realized precisely what he’d walked in on. His eyes darted from her to Jedao spread out under her, lingering on the places where they were pressed together even as he went red.

Beneath her, Jedao shuddered and made a noise somewhere between a whimper and a whine, his cock throbbing in her grip like he’d just come again.

Ruo’s throat worked as he swallowed. “Sorry, I—I should’ve knocked. I’ll come back later,” he blurted out, and practically slammed into the door before it could open automatically on his way out.

* * *

“Are you all right?” Sereset asked. They’d been paired together for the first training exercise of the year: organizing various plans of action to infiltrate a heretical organization.

“Fine,” Ruo said shortly.

Sereset looked doubtful, but didn’t call him on it. Just as well. Ruo wasn’t sure he’d be able to keep it all in if someone pressed him. Focusing on the task before them kept him occupied, barely.

Ruo nearly hadn’t made it back for his third year. The business his younger father owned had suddenly gone under last year, and the cost of tuition and lodgings at a faction academy was too much for their newly strained finances.

If Jedao hadn’t offered to share a two bedroom apartment in the city, Ruo wouldn’t have been able to afford to attend. He should have realized something was up then—Jedao’s mother wasn’t much better off than Ruo’s parents.

It wasn’t until he’d arrived back at Shuos Academy Prime that he’d realized Yeren would be sharing the apartment with them as well. Jedao had conveniently left that part out when he’d sold Ruo on the idea. Naturally, he and Yeren would have one bedroom and Ruo would have the other.

Yeren’s family was loaded, so it only made sense. All three of her parents had steady jobs that wouldn’t be going out of demand any time soon. One of her mothers was a Liozh near the top of the planetary government on her home world, for stars’ sake. Of course Yeren could afford a larger apartment than the modest one bedroom she’d had for the past two years, even if she was subletting him and Jedao for a pittance.

Yeren and Jedao were Ruo’s best friends. He should have been thrilled. But recently he’d felt more and more that he was the odd one out. Yeren and Jedao could hardly keep their hands off each other, though they always offered to stop whenever he walked in on them. Even when one or the other of them invited him for meals or other outings, he wound up feeling like an unnecessary third wheel on their dates.

Bad enough that he always seemed to be interrupting them. He didn’t want their friendship to turn to resentment if he constantly came between them. He could already imagine how difficult it would be with the three of them sharing an apartment.

“Is this about Jedao and his girlfriend?” Sereset said about fourteen minutes later. He sounded unconcerned either way as he recorded his portion of the answer on a slate, but there was a small smile on his mouth.

Sereset was always smiling. Ruo had never felt he was the butt of the joke with him before, though. He stiffened and looked around, but if the other cadets nearby had heard Sereset, they gave no sign of it. They seemed to be focused on their own work.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ruo said.

Sereset’s smile stayed steady. “They’re courting you.”

 _What_.

“What,” Ruo said, strangled. His tone did get the attention of the pair next to them. The speculative look Irin gave him was downright unnerving.

“Sorry—” Sereset did not sound remotely apologetic, and his smile still didn’t waver, “—did you forget this from last year? We learned about initiating calendrical spikes a month or so before the break, remember?” His voice had the same casual tone he’d maintained throughout the conversation.

Ruo forced his head back into the game and looked at the slate. Sereset’s suggested offensive to deal with a hypothetical case of calendrical rot by spiking the calendar back into the heptarchate’s preferred function seemed sound. Ruo checked over the equation; it was correct.

“There are other options,” Ruo said. “A calendrical spike is decisive but if it goes wrong—” The ones initiating the spike could end up declared heretics themselves. Maintenance of the high calendar was beyond the Shuos purview as well.

“Calendrical mathematics are more complicated than the approximations we learn here,” Sereset conceded; but the question had requested a solution that involved a calendrical spike.

They idly debated the topic back and forth for a few more minutes. When Ruo glanced over, Irin and Veller were looking at their slate again.

“They’re not courting me,” Ruo said as casually as he could manage when their current topic of discussion came to an end.

“My parents are Andan,” Sereset said in a similar tone. “I’m quite familiar with various types of courtship. Their efforts are not particularly subtle.”

The very idea was baffling. Jedao and Yeren’s relationship as a couple was the most stable configuration. Larger arrangements worked in theory—Yeren’s family seemed happy—but Ruo couldn’t imagine it for himself. Besides, Jedao and Yeren were both brilliant, and Ruo was just—an impulsive would-be assassin. As their third, he’d only unbalance them, surely—

“I understand a pair is the usual relationship configuration on your home world,” Sereset added, carefully neutral.

Cadets’ planet of origin and a few other familial details were in the public database available for students, so it wasn’t unexpected that Sereset knew this. Yeren had even hinted that more complete profiles existed on the grid for the instructors’—and skilled cadet-hackers’—use.

Why Sereset would have bothered looking Ruo’s profile up in the first place was another question entirely.

“What about it?” Ruo couldn’t keep the hostility out of his voice, but he did keep the volume down. Sereset’s eyes flickered to the fists Ruo hadn’t realized he’d made; after a moment, Ruo loosened them with deliberate effort and picked up the slate.

Sereset’s smile returned as if it had never been gone and he leaned forward to watch Ruo input nonsense for one of the answers. “So maybe you’re not interested in a triad; it’s none of my business. But if you are interested, there’s a betting pool going on for when the three of you get together. I haven’t committed, but it’d be nice to win.”

Ruo stifled his initial outrage that others had been speculating on his relationship with Yeren and Jedao. As he turned the idea over in his mind—it really hadn’t occurred to him, before Sereset brought it up—Yeren and Jedao’s inexplicable behaviour towards the end of last year began to make more sense.

He did want them both, something he hadn’t admitted to himself even as they contrived for him to walk in on them in all sorts of positions.

Sereset was watching him with that thin smile playing across his face still; he could’ve been lying about the betting pool—but all Shuos loved games, or pretended they did, anyway. Gambling was a perfectly Shuos pastime.

The thought of cashing in was tempting—suitable revenge for others gossiping about him, as well as much-needed revenue to supplement the small cadet stipend. Assuming Sereset wasn’t having Ruo on about Yeren and Jedao—courting him.

“What kind of stakes are we talking?”

Sereset’s smile widened, taking on a mischievous edge that Ruo had never seen before. The other cadet always kept his head down, so Ruo had never considered him as a potential prankster-in-crime, but—

“I’ll have to make inquiries,” Sereset said.

Ruo nodded. He sent a quick message to Yeren to meet up after the last class of the day, then leaned back in his seat and gave Sereset a toothy grin of his own. “So, how bad was it when you told your Andan parents you wanted to go Shuos?”

* * *

A kiss pressed to the top of his head was Ruo’s standard greeting for Jedao; Yeren hid her confusion behind a smile when Ruo offered her the same.

Ruo grinned back as he dropped into the seat across from her. The standard workday had yet to end, so the café was relatively empty. She and Ruo both had a free period at the end of the day but Jedao had an analysis course, so it was just the two of them at the corner table furthest from the door.

“This for me?” Ruo peered at the cup of tea she’d bought for him while she was waiting.

Yeren nodded, off-balance.

Ruo made an almost obscene noise of enjoyment after taking a sip. “Thanks, Yeren.”

“You’re welcome.” She tried, and failed, not to stare as he toyed with the straw.

“Sereset and I were paired for an exercise today. Apparently his parents are Andan,” Ruo said. “Oh—do you know Sereset? I don’t think Jedao and I talk about him much.”

Yeren was passingly familiar with all of the infantry course cadets in their year, courtesy of obsessively checking over their profiles. She’d taken particular notice of Sereset because his parents were all Andan: the rivalry between that faction and the Shuos was legendary, and his decision to apply to the Shuos had caught her eye.

“He’s come up once or twice,” she said.

Ruo nodded. “Right. He was telling me about courting practices among different cultures. Offering food and shelter without expectation of repayment was a common theme.”

Yeren made an inquiring sound and took a sip of her own tea. Had she not glanced up through her eyelashes, she would have missed the uncertainty that flashed across Ruo’s face; he was all grins when she set her tea back down.

“Might be useful, I guess, if I ever have to court someone,” Ruo said.

“I suppose.” Yeren’s hand clenched around her cup; the flimsy disposable material buckled slightly under the force of her grip. She bit back a curse and checked to make sure that it wasn’t going to spill or start leaking.

Ruo was staring out the window when she looked up once more; if he had noticed anything amiss, he didn’t show it.

“Do you think Sereset was trying to flirt with you by telling you all this?” Yeren managed; her voice sounded casual enough, at least.

Ruo’s mouth quirked into a small—but far more sincere—smile. “Definitely not. For one thing, I don’t think he’s interested in—anyone.”

“His loss,” Yeren said.

Ruo raised his eyebrows. “Some people just don’t—fuck, or love, or whatever.”

“I know _that_. I just meant—whoever you end up with will be lucky to have you.” Yeren bit the inside of her cheek. What was she even _saying_? Whenever she imagined Ruo finally getting a clue about her and Jedao’s intentions, Jedao was always here too.

Ruo laughed a little. “Thanks.”

The silence that fell then was not entirely comfortable, but Yeren didn’t know how to break it. Ruo was in a strange mood; he didn’t usually hide what he felt from her or Jedao.

A group of cadets wandered in a few minutes later, drawing them both from their thoughts. Ruo looked at them a little blankly, then shrugged and quickly finished the rest of his tea. The slurping noise his straw made in the empty cup should have been irritating, but it was just—Ruo.

He stood to toss the cup away. “Should we head back to the apartment?”

Yeren nodded, not trusting herself not to ruin the conversation even further, and followed him to the door. He held it open for her with a flourish.

“After you.” He winked. “I don’t think I remember the way to our place.”

It sounded better when he called it _theirs_ , although they’d only had the apartment for a few days so far.

"Still having trouble with that situational awareness?" she teased, smiling, and led him outside.

Their apartment wasn’t far from the café, but neither of them was in a particular hurry to reach it. Uncharacteristic for Ruo, who seemed to enjoy running headlong wherever he went. She glanced at him a few times on the walk over, but he seemed lost in thought.

“Are you courting me?” Ruo blurted out as soon as they were inside. “You and Jedao, I mean. Or—or just you. I don’t know.” He looked away; he was so tense the muscle in his jaw stood out in stark relief.

“Yes,” Yeren said, and took his hand and led him to the couch. Ruo had procured a couple of pillows with geese in various poses on them, supposedly to _liven up the space_ , much to Jedao’s annoyance and her own bemusement; she had him sit against them.

“Yes, what.” Ruo’s grip verged on painful, but Yeren didn’t protest; hers was probably just as strong.

“Yes, Jedao and I are courting you.”

Ruo exhaled raggedly, nearly sagging in relief. “I thought—I don’t know what I thought. But I never imagined the two of you would—with _me_ —”

Yeren gave in to her impulse and cupped his neck with her free hand, stroking at the tense muscle in his jaw. Ruo leaned into the touch, his eyes half-lidded and fixed on her.

“We didn’t know if you were interested,” Yeren said.

“You didn’t know if _I_ was interested?” Ruo sounded outraged.

Yeren laughed in spite of herself. “Well, we knew you were turned on, but neither of us could tell if you wanted a relationship with us or just sex.”

“Whatever you want from me,” Ruo said immediately, then flushed. “I mean, uh, shouldn’t we. Jedao and I are compatible, obviously, but you and I have never even kissed.”

“Whatever you want,” Yeren echoed, and kissed him.

Ruo’s lips were slightly chapped; he kissed more forcefully than Jedao, who liked to play at dominance before yielding beautifully.

That was when Jedao walked in, of course. Yeren noticed, but she didn’t particularly feel like stopping. As it turned out, she and Ruo were extremely compatible.

“Getting started without me?” Jedao drawled.

“Uh, wait—” Ruo leaned back from her, but Jedao just crowded into his space and they fell into a frantic bout of kissing.

Ruo grabbed her wrist when she went for his pants, though, and pushed Jedao away with his other hand. “Wait,” he said again.

“We’ve been waiting for _months_ ,” Yeren hissed.

Ruo looked stricken and wondering all at once, but he caught hold of himself when Jedao tried to lean in again. “Then you can wait a little longer,” he insisted.

“Why,” Jedao said plaintively.

“Sereset told me there’s a betting pool for when the three of us get together, and he’s agreed to split the winnings with me,” Ruo said. “So we can’t do anything until the date and time he chooses.”

Yeren stared disbelievingly at Ruo’s stupid—gorgeous—face, and wondered what she’d gotten herself into as Jedao started to laugh.


	2. Chapter 2

Jedao was asleep when the message came through; it wasn’t flagged with any sort of priority, so he nearly missed the minor notification when he woke up and queried the grid for any new developments.

The identity of the sender was redacted. He did not open it immediately. The fact that the message had reached his moth in the middle of a swarm assigned to a particularly barren region of the Rosetta March meant only a select handful of people could have sent it.

Kel Command would have sent any missives through official channels—not that they would have any for a mere seconded commander. Yeren could have sent the message herself: she’d been talented enough at hacking to get fast-tracked to the heptarch’s office after graduation and her skills had only increased in the two decades since. But there were other skilled hackers in the Shuos, and she wouldn’t have risked the message’s interception.

The Shuos heptarch was the only reasonable conclusion.

The message was short, nothing more than a date, a time and a location. A summons. It coincided with his upcoming leave, assuming no inconvenient new heresy arose and the Taurag remained content with the current configuration of the border it shared with the heptarchate.

Jedao ignored the flutter of nerves with the ease of long practice, and got out of bed. His shift in Command was due to begin in less than an hour.

* * *

The summons led him to a station straddling the border of Rosetta and Concerto March. Its relative proximity to the nearby Severed March as well had made it prosperous. It was with real regret that Jedao avoided the gambling halls that had sprung up around the moth bays: he was nearly late to the meeting, and so he headed directly to the local Shuos office.

Every major installation in the heptarchate had one, and this station was no exception. His unusual uniform drew the eye of the Shuos working in the office, but none of them commented as he made for the secured terminal.

The heptarch left him cooling his heels for nearly twenty-eight minutes before the call went through.

“Commander Jedao.” The heptarch was smiling as always.

“Shuos-zho,” Jedao said, only a beat too late, and made what obeisance he could within the terminal’s limited field of view.

“Your presence is required on the Citadel of Eyes for the foreseeable future,” the heptarch said.

Jedao didn’t flinch, but his silence stretched for too long. He’d taken secondment to the Kel for a reason.

“But I’ve wrangled a promotion out of the Kel for your service. Congratulations, General.”

Jedao bowed once more, keeping his face hidden. There was no telling who was watching the terminal room, or the feed itself. “I will make all haste, Shuos-zho.”

“I know you will.” The heptarch’s smile widened, and the screen went dark.

* * *

The shadowmoth that would take him to the Citadel of Eyes was waiting in the hangar. It was a new model, smaller and sleeker than the warmoths Jedao had become accustomed to.

The Shuos crew within paid him no more attention than they should have, offering nods or salutes as was their preference. Shuos discipline was very different from its Kel counterpart.

“When do we depart?” Jedao asked, after he’d been given the tour by the grizzled, sardonic commander.

“On your order, sir.” Their tone skirted condescension, and they had not given his rank insignia another glance since Jedao had first introduced himself.

He’d been supplied with a uniform displaying his new rank before he left the office. It was perfectly Shuos, red with gold accents, aside from the brigadier general’s insignia: the wings were purely Kel, with the Shuos eye indicating Jedao’s faction below. The Shuos hierarchy was as different from the Kel’s as its discipline; the last Shuos general had been appointed more than a century ago, in the wake of a particularly violent internal upheaval.

Internal conflict hadn’t been an issue under the previous heptarch, who had led the Shuos for an unprecedented four decades and had been expected to lead for several more.

Jedao smiled at the veteran commander. “How long have you commanded the _Eyes Unblinded_?”

* * *

The trip to Stabglass March was uneventful. Jedao made himself useful where he could, getting to know various crew members over shared duties or games of _jeng-zai_. Their commander remained uncharmed, but Jedao was more than used to that from some of the higher Kel officers he’d served.

This time, he was not made to wait before the heptarch called him into the office. The room was much changed since Jedao had seen it last. Heptarch Shuos Sereset evidently had vastly different tastes than his predecessor; the decor seemed almost—Andan.

“Thank you for coming on such short notice, General.”

Jedao bowed. “Naturally, Shuos-zho.” He hadn’t had anything better to do, since Sereset had recalled him from the Kel.

“Jedao. You saved my life. At least call me Sereset.”

“As you wish, Sereset-zho.”

Sereset sighed faintly, but he got on with it. “I wish I could allow you more than a few days’ leave, but I have several credible rivals for the heptarch’s seat that I need dealt with.” The blunt words were underscored by Sereset’s grave face.

The grid projected three faces into the space between them. Jedao recognized two: the alt in the middle was deputy director of the infantry division, and the woman on the left was officially a minor bureaucrat attached to the former heptarch’s office. She was widely held to be that heptarch’s right hand, however.

As far as rivals and enemies within the Shuos went, it couldn’t get much worse, but the fact that Jedao had no idea who the third face was suggested that it was, in fact, worse than he knew.

Jedao focused on the two he knew. Shuos Haun handled the faction’s infantry on the far side of the heptarchate; given that they spent the majority of their time rubbing shoulders with assassins, eliminating them before making a bid for the heptarch’s seat would have been difficult.

On the other hand, Shuos Te Liahn was stationed on the Citadel of Eyes; it should have been fairly trivial to eliminate her at the same time as the previous heptarch.

“Why was Te allowed to depart the Citadel?” Jedao asked.

Sereset smiled thinly. “My ascension was not planned.”

Jedao gave in to the impulse and examined the floral arrangement to one side of the desk. It was quite beautiful, and perfectly proper, if a bit heavy on the roses. No kniferoses, at least.

“Aligning with the Andan was an interesting choice,” he said.

“I had already alienated many of the senior Shuos simply by taking the heptarch’s seat,” Sereset said mildly. “My family’s faction is no secret.”

And the Andan would be eager to destabilize their closest rival faction or, at the very least, help install a heptarch more sympathetic to their culture. But they’d been the best option Sereset had: the rank and file Shuos were keeping their heads down, doing their job and nothing more. There was no telling how long Sereset would last.

It was the pragmatic choice, the one that Jedao would have made himself if he’d had the option. Instead, Sereset had somehow gotten him promoted by the Kel and made Jedao appear to be a favoured ally. No one would believe a show of indifference, and Jedao could not afford a more decisive rebuff of Sereset’s apparent good will.

There was no point in imagining what might have been if he hadn’t saved Sereset’s life almost twenty years ago; it wasn’t as if Jedao was one of the Shuos old guard who’d supported the previous heptarch so strongly. He probably would have chosen to support Sereset’s bid for the seat, if he’d had any inkling that Sereset desired it.

“Who would you have me target first?” Jedao asked. “I’m unfamiliar with the manform.”

“Yeren has requested permission to handle Te. I hoped you and Ruo would deal with Haun and Seok.”

“Ruo is here—” Jedao cursed himself for the slip. Yeren had remained with the heptarch’s office when Jedao had sought secondment to the Kel, but Ruo had never interested the previous heptarch. His assignments had ranged in the far reaches of the heptarchate, and he had been called to the Citadel of Eyes on only a handful of occasions.

Alarmingly, Sereset’s smile widened. “Did you really think I killed the heptarch?”

Why would he paint such a massive target on his back if he _hadn’t_? Though the poor execution of it had bothered Jedao all the way here. Sereset had never been this sloppy.

Or impulsive.

Jedao wondered what the previous heptarch had done to drive Ruo to murder her.

“It’s gratifying to see that you don’t _always_ have the perfect answer,” Sereset said, “but I should have listened to Yeren and let her and Ruo explain.” He sounded almost apologetic. “I needed to speak with you first, however. I really thought Yeren was in regular communication with you.”

As if they could assume anything that happened on the Citadel of Eyes escaped the heptarch’s notice.

“Did Ruo really—” Jedao cut himself off again.

“I believe something my predecessor said to Ruo mortally offended him.” Sereset’s gaze flickered briefly to his terminal display. “Ask him yourself if you require further clarification. I’ll send you what we have on Haun and Seok tomorrow too. You can look it over during your week off, if you’re not too busy with your spouses.”

“I’m not married,” Jedao managed.

“Oh? My mistake.” Sereset was not the least bit contrite. “I suppose the marriage should wait until after you three deal with my rivals in any case. It will have to be a public affair, of course,” he added mercilessly.

“Hey—”

“I’m a very busy man, Jedao, and I can’t work if my chief assistant pings me every seven seconds demanding to know where you are.”

“Sereset.” Jedao ground the name out more sharply than he intended.

The heptarch raised an eyebrow and gestured for him to speak.

“Why would you—” Jedao couldn’t bring himself to say it.

“You saved my life,” Sereset said. “And I do feel—responsible. For saddling you with Ruo. You’d settled on someone sensible in Yeren, and then I went and inflicted him on both of you. I imagine he’d still be bumbling along obliviously if I hadn’t told him.”

Jedao studied him, trying to gauge his sincerity. Sereset met his gaze patiently, smiling all the while. It still didn’t feel quite real. But this scenario was too elaborate—too _flawed_ —to be anything but real. The man sitting before him was the Shuos heptarch.

And Jedao would do everything in his power to see that he remained.

“You just didn’t want to saddle the Shuos with Ruo as heptarch.” The words came out even more teasing than Jedao intended; something light was swelling in his chest.

“Ruo is an exemplary member of the Shuos infantry,” Sereset said mildly, which was almost certainly a lie. “Now run along to your quarters, I really am busy.”

Yeren and Ruo were waiting for him. Jedao went.


End file.
